The Salt Choir

Quiet, measured, and creepy. The Salt Choir doesn’t do big scares; it does the small, insistent ones — the ferryman’s grunt, the hiss of the reels, a name spoken where no one stands — and it’s more effective for it. I loved Lina’s nervous competence, the way the author trusts the reader to feel the island close around her. The ferryman Einar and Ragnhild feel like real islanders, and the bone tuning fork is a brilliant, unsettling prop. The scene where Lina finds a spool that seems to say her name made my skin crawl. Highly recommended for readers who prefer dread and atmosphere over spectacle.

I finished The Salt Choir in one sitting and my neck is still prickly from the last line. Lina is a lovely, believable lead — nervous and precise in the way someone who catalogues old sounds would be — and the island setting is rendered so tactile I could taste the iron on the ferry. That opening scene where Einar warns, “when the sea lies flat as a mirror, don’t say your name near a wire,” stayed with me the whole way through. The book’s strongest weapon is sound: the reels, the ferryman’s bone tuning fork, the way a cistern learns to speak. The moment Lina plays back a spool and hears a voice that knows her name was genuinely unsettling; the author stages it without cheap shocks, relying on dread and small details (the mast like a finger, the gulls’ “stone-bright eyes”) to do the work. Ragnhild and Einar are sketched just enough to feel real and ominous; their exchanges — her “You’re late” — have weight. I loved the folkloric undercurrent: the ferry, the ferryman, the warning, the notion of making a thing forget you. The ending felt earned and haunting. If you like slow-burn horror that creeps in through atmosphere and sound rather than gore, this is a beautiful, uneasy read.

I found this one underwhelming. The premise — an archivist hearing her own name on old reels — is promising, and the ferryman/Einar bit is atmospheric, but too much relies on familiar island-horror tropes. The bone tuning fork felt a little on-the-nose as a magical prop, and the cistern that “learns to speak” wasn’t convincingly explained. There are a few good lines and the setting is moody, but I kept wanting more logical coherence. The story leans on dread rather than delivering a satisfying resolution. Not bad, but not memorable either.

The Salt Choir is an atmospheric delight — a layered folk-horror that understands how sound can be both ghost and evidence. The author builds tension through motifs: reels and tape, the mast like a finger, Einar’s knotty hands, and the ferryman’s almost ritualistic bone tuning fork. Lina’s job as a sound archivist is not window-dressing; it’s central to the plot and to the themes of memory and forgetting. The scene where she first hears a reel address her by name is handled with restraint and escalating dread rather than melodrama, which made it all the more effective. There’s also a folkloric spine to the story that I enjoyed — the ferry, the ferryman, the keeper of doors (Ragnhild) — but it’s not just retelling old motifs. The narrative asks: what happens when the technologies we use to preserve the past start preserving us back? The cistern’s voice functions on multiple levels: supernatural menace, literal archive, and haunting memory. My favorite moments were the small exchanges: the ferryman’s casual warning about wires; Ragnhild’s curt “You’re late,” which carries a lot of implied history; and the careful way Lina reads the caretaker’s notes and realizes the depth of what she’s dealing with. The ending left me unsettled in the best way—questions remain, but they feel intentional. If you like slow-burn, literate horror that leans on sensory detail rather than jump scares, this is a lovely, eerie ride.

As someone who dabbles in audio preservation, I appreciated the careful handling of Lina’s craft — the reel-to-reel recorder wrapped in a scarf, the cataloging contract, the tactile descriptions of tape and wind. The story leans hard into the idea that recordings can remember more than we intend, and that’s where it gets truly creepy. Technically, the prose is economical but evocative: the ferry’s “metal ribs shivering,” the mast “like a finger pointing nowhere.” Specific moments work especially well — Einar’s cryptic advice, the ferryman’s bone tuning fork, and the caretaker Ragnhild meeting them on the pier. The cistern that learns to speak is a terrific concept; the scenes where Lina must try to make it forget her name are full of slow tension and auditory horror. If there’s a critique, it’s only that a couple of beats are telegraphed (old-island warnings and the ferryman figure are classic tropes), but the story subverts them often enough with texture and sound-design detail that it never feels stale. Solid, thoughtful horror with a uniquely aural focus.

I wanted to love The Salt Choir and it starts promisingly — a bleak island, a tactile opening with reels and a recorder, and a protagonist whose job lends the premise weight. The ferryman Einar and Ragnhild are atmospheric figures, and that line about not saying your name near a wire is a lovely, creepy piece of folklore. But the middle drags. The pacing gets bogged down in repeated scenes of Lina listening to spools; the dread should have mounted, but felt more like treading water. The cistern learning to speak is an intriguing idea, yet the mechanics and stakes aren’t made clear enough. Why does the cistern target Lina specifically? The caretaker’s notes and the tuning fork are cool props, but they felt like hints that weren’t fully followed up. There are bright spots — some great sensory writing (the ferry’s metal ribs, the gulls’ stone-bright eyes) and a genuinely unsettling moment when she hears her name — but the payoff didn’t match the buildup for me. I kept waiting for a twist that might pull everything into focus; it never quite arrived.

I wasn’t expecting to be so invested in a woman unpacking recording reels, but here we are. The Salt Choir sneaks up on you: it’s equal parts folklore and fieldwork. Lina’s recordings feel like a character in their own right — especially the moment she realizes the cistern recognizes her name. Chills. The writing balances plain description (the ferry, the mast) with oddly poetic lines (“metal ribs shivering,” “memory of coins”), and the ferryman Einar is an excellent bit of local color. Ragnhild’s brusque ‘You’re late’ gave me the sense that she’d been waiting for trouble as long as the mound of reels had been gathering dust. Only quibble: I wanted a touch more explanation about how the cistern’s speech works — but honestly, the ambiguity mostly helped the mood. Enjoyed this a lot — smart, spooky, and quietly strange.

Creepy as hell and smart about sound. The whole ferry approach bit — gulls keeping a distance, ropes arcing, Einar’s sealskin cap — set me up perfectly. The idea of a cistern that learns to speak? Brilliant and gross in all the right ways. The ferryman’s bone tuning fork was such a cool detail; I kept picturing it between scenes like a leitmotif. There’s a lovely line where Lina admits she sometimes sleeps with headphones on “the way some people slept with a nightlight.” That tiny humanizing detail made her feel real. I laughed nervously at the warning about not saying your name near a wire and then…got chills when it happened. This one gets a solid thumbs-up from me. 👏